MIKE Keenan just might be the only coach on earth with the temerity to tell the truth to Mark Messier, might be the only hockey man alive with sufficient political incorrectness to act on what Glen Sather looks at but does not want to see.

He might be the only man with the courage to reduce the 43-year-old Messier’s minutes to the necessary bare minimum so that the Rangers can have a chance to save the season.

The Rangers have lost three straight, four of five with Jaromir Jagr and seven of eight overall coming into tonight’s Garden match with the vastly superior Canucks, and with the post-All Star schedule threatening to become the equivalent of a Mets’ September, last Monday’s unqualified endorsement of Sather by Jim Dolan is older news than Howard Dean’s inevitability.

Fact is, with 14 home games remaining, Dolan is looking at an insurrection of massive proportions by the disgusted paying customers. It’s a good thing the team doesn’t have any games scheduled for outdoors, for if the Rangers did, someone would surely charter an aircraft that would bear a banner carrying the message: “Seven Years of Lousy Hockey . . . We’ve Had Enough.”

It is enough. Enough already with Sather behind the bench. Enough with the underlying pathology coming out of the GM/coach’s office that makes it impossible for the Rangers to operate like a real professional team. Enough with misplaced loyalty to the past that condemns the present and threatens the future. Enough of 1994.

The Post has confirmed that Keenan initiated a dialog with Sather late last week, though it is not known whether Sather, or his MSG bosses Dolan and Steve Mills, have at all pursued the possibility of bringing Iron Mike back for a second act.

Keenan, whose mother, Thelma, passed away after a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer and whose wife, Nola, underwent major back surgery both within weeks of his early-November dismissal by the Panthers, has been interested in the Ranger job pretty much since Sather was named GM in June of 2000.

If Keenan, who alienated Wayne Gretzky and Brett Hull eight years ago in St. Louis without looking back, can approach Messier with objectivity, he is the only hope the Rangers have.

Keenan incites a period of turmoil wherever he goes, and the Rangers don’t really have time for that, but never has a team been in more need of an emotional shakeup than this one; never had a club been more in need of a coach who can run a bench. Sather won’t do what’s necessary. He has the least accountable team in NHL history and it isn’t the team’s fault.

Prior to Saturday’s game in Buffalo, Sather told some members of the traveling party that he’d have the Rangers take a 10-hour bus ride home if they lost. It’s not known whether the players were aware of this puerile attempt at motivation, or how serious the threat was, but the Rangers did fly home after losing. He won’t match lines, won’t bench players, won’t hold practices, but he’ll threaten bus rides. He’ll threaten bus rides and ride Messier to the detriment of the team.

Sather looks at Messier and sees 1984. Maybe Keenan will look at Messier and see 1994. If that’s the case, he can’t come back. But if not, if Keenan can look Messier in the eye and tell him what everyone in hockey knows but is too respectful to say, then bring him in.